What's New at Caribou
Bob and Teresa just completed a nearly month-long trip in the Southeast U.S. in March, perfectly timed to catch the azaleas and daffodils in bloom. We visited some old clients, and brought on some new clients, and even did a Continuing Logger's Education seminar on job-costing in Georgia. (See the Section on Job Costing later in the newsletter for more information.) It was a great trip, we enjoyed seeing forests of pine trees, palm trees, and hardwoods all mixed together, and we are now dreaming of a beachfront Caribou outpost in the Florida panhandle. Jen and Jeremy seem to be on board with this concept, too!
Speaking of Jeremy, they say the “third time is a charm,” and we are happy to announce that after two unsuccessful attempts over the last 12 months at finding a support representative that fit the bill, we have finally found a real keeper! Jeremy Phillippe is our newest computer ‘geek’ here at Caribou. He's introducing us to all kinds of cool technology tricks, and we are indoctrinating him to just how many ways people can invent to pay for a load of logs! He joined us in January, and some of you have already spoken to him on the phone. We are really happy to have him on board!
We have two trade shows coming up in the next couple months. The first one is the Northeast Forest Expo on May 9 and 10 in Essex Junction, Vermont, which we will be attending with Chris and Karen from Northwoods Management, our Northeast sales representative. We will spend the following week in Maine and are looking forward to meeting some existing clients and hopefully bringing on some new ones, too! The second show is the biannual show at Forest Expo in Prince George, BC on June 5, 6, and 7. We hope to see many of you there!
Finally, in our last newsletter, we inquired about interest in a Caribou Software User Conference. While some users expressed interest in the idea, the overall belt tightening in the industry leads us to believe that we should save this idea for another year.
Welcome New Customers
Since our last newsletter in October, we have added a number of new flags, mostly South of the Border. We are happy to have added new Logger's Edge flags in
Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina,
and Michigan. One of our new customers in Florida actually came through a referral of one of our BC users to their extended family members in the Sunshine state. Again, we can't tell you how much we appreciate the referrals that you all make for us — it is a huge reason why we are able to stay in business!
We are also excited about a few new Mechanic's Edge clients as well.
Comstock Woodlands in Maine is using the program to maintain their shop inventory and keep track of the parts history associated with each equipment unit.
Walsh Forest Products in Minnesota is using it to keep track of all the shop work orders and parts costs associated with each equipment unit.
Timber Specialists in North Carolina is using the system to manage their scheduled machine maintenance events.
Job Costing - More Important Now Than Ever
As mentioned, Bob did a job costing seminar in Louisville, Georgia in March. The overall idea of the seminar was to present a data tracking methodology that allows loggers to determine their costs per unit of production (e.g., cost per ton or per cubic meter) on a job-by-job basis. Given the increasing fuel costs and the need to be able to translate those rising costs into a cost per ton type of metric, this topic seems to be more and more on the minds of our users. We've posted a copy of the powerpoint on our website if you are interested.
Developer's Corner
We have been working away on a couple of interesting new development items. The first — which we have code named "Suzie Logger" — is a hand-held system to be used by the loaderman as an electronic log sheet to replace the daily handwritten sheets that most loadermen keep. The idea is that the loaderman can enter his load tickets into this hand-held, and can upload his daily tickets for the main office to import. The benefit of this approach is two-fold. First, it will save clerical time in the office by eliminating some of the ticket key entry work. Second, it will provide a cross reference of the loads from your loaderman's sheets with the loads turned in by your truck drivers (or provided by the mills). We are looking forward to piloting Suzie Logger in June with one of our large contractors in British Columbia. If you are interested in learning more, give us a call or send an email to bob.lucke@caribousoftware.com.
The second product we've been working on is the Work Order Management System (the WORM for short), which may be of interest to some of our Western Canadian users in particular. Contractors doing work in the oil-patch are required to submit daily "work orders" to the oil companies for whom they are working. These work orders must essentially be submitted on a daily basis and can only be invoiced upon approval. The WORM is designed to generate electronic work orders that can be emailed to the contractor for approval. It also allows you to attach electronic copies of the approved sheets to the actual work order, and to keep track of which work orders have actually been invoiced. Again, if you'd like to learn more about this product, give us a call or send an email to teresa.hannah@caribousoftware.com.
Cool New Features
During the past year, we have introduced a number of new features into the system. A comprehensive set of release notes can be found in the Support section of our website. We included a short list of some of the highlights here.
US Version:
- Multiple Landowner Checkbox
This feature allows you to pay multiple landowners associated with a tract. For more information see our website
- Allow for Payment of Per Ton Rates by Mileage Zones
This feature is useful for anyone who has truck pricing by the ton (or cut and haul pricing, for that matter) based on mileage zones.
- Make Invoice Calculator Check for Tickets With No Revenue
The Full Invoice Calculator will now alert users if they have any tickets where there is no revenue record generated at all for a given ticket.
- Enhanced Georgia Timber Tax Form Printing
This function allows the user to transfer the Logger's Edge Stumpage payment data to a formatted MS Word file and use it to print their tax filings.
- Enhanced Revenue Reconciliation Features
For users that use our mill settlement reconciliation process, we've enhanced the way that the load revenue window works to make it immediately visible that you have been paid an amount for a ticket that is not consistent with the amount the Logger's Edge says is owing to you. More information is available on our website.
Canadian Version:
- Ability to Pay Drivers by Cycle Time Set up in the Block Setup Wizard.
In Western Canada, it is fairly common to pay drivers an hourly rate based on the "standard" cycle time allowed by the mill. Within the last year, we have added the ability to set up rates per cycle time so that the system will use that rate in conjunction with the cycle time set up for each block/destination combination to pay truckers. If you don't currently use this feature, but would like to, let us know, and we can give you a hand with it.
- New Report: Block Hourly Cost Summary (#160):
This report is especially useful for contractors who use Logger's Edge to track both time sheets and loadslips, but do not necessarily key in the actual equipment units for every phase of operation directly on each individual load slip. The report allows you to see hours, volumes, and cost per cubic meter (or tonne) from each phase of operation. The documentation for this report is on our website. If you need help enabling it, just contact one of our support representatives.
Both Countries:
- Menu Item to Filter Blocks in Grid
There is a handy new menu item, Setup → Blocks (Tracts) → Seek, which allows you to quickly look up one or more blocks/tracts quickly without having to load the entire Block (Tract) setup grid. This feature is particularly useful for users with quite long block (tract) lists. Note: the wildcard character for a search is the percent (%) sign.
- Ability to Auto-Generate Pay Periods
There is a new feature under File → System Configuration on the Payment tab that lets you auto-create pay periods. You can make them weekly, biweekly, monthly or semi-monthly. This is particularly handy at the start of the year when you want to set up all your pay periods for the year.
- Save Column Width Settings in Grid
If a user resizes columns in the “split view” window (e.g., loadslip window, time slip window, miscellaneous window, employee setup, etc), those column resizings are now saved. The next time the user brings up that window, the resizings will be saved.
- Truck Costing - Mirror Contractor Pay
There is a new Basic Setup setting that allows users with their own trucks to “cost” their trucks as if they were paid the same as a contract trucker. See the documentation on our website for more details.
- New Report - Truck Costs as PCT of Revenue
There is a new report (Report #623) that is particularly helpful for companies that own their own trucks. The report allows users to see all costs associated with their own trucks (labor costs as well as any miscellaneous costs entered against the truck) relative to the revenue generated by the truck. For more information, see the documentation on our web site.
- Enhanced Vendor Calculator
The vendor calculator has been been modified to improve speed for users that have very long vendor lists.
- Make Filter Retain Settings Upon Deletion of Information in Grid
The Excel-like filter available in the split-view windows will now retain your settings when you add or delete entries.
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